Lavrov's Article for Rossiyskaya Gazeta Recalls First 9/11--The Chilean Coup

And the terror caused then continues today--Policy Continuity

Lavrov vividly connects the past with the present in his review of the events that happened in Chile 50+ years ago. Given what it had already done in other nations in the Western Hemisphere, its behavior in Chile was predictable yet was still a massive shock. As Lavrov remarks, many lessons were learned. The expression on Lavrov’s face in the above photo seems fitting. Hudson’s description of what was done is also a condemnation of the University of Chicago and the parasites it birthed—he directly accuses its members of murder; and given what we now know, he’s correct. Lavrov the diplomat says essentially the same things but uses other rhetoric and facts. Fifty years ago, he was a just starting his diplomatic career, and that event made a large lasting impact.

50 Years of the Putsch in Chile: Memory and Lessons

Fifty years ago, on September 11, 1973, an event occurred in Chile that caused a major shock to the world community. As a result of a bloody coup d'état, the Government of Popular Unity was overthrown and the military dictatorship of the junta, headed by General Pinochet, was established. Photos of fighter jets patrolling over the presidential palace of La Moneda in the center of Santiago, as well as the legitimately elected President Salvador Allende, who defended the democratic foundations of the state in the last minutes of his life in a helmet and with a machine gun in his hands, flew around the world.

The usurpers were angrily branded by the great Chilean poet, Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda: "punishers of Chilean history, hyenas, tearing the victorious banner." Who died shortly after the coup, he is not without reason considered one of its iconic victims.

The putsch in distant Chile also shook up our country, which was well known to Stepan Allende, who had visited Moscow many times, including as President. The Soviet Union was actively involved in the international campaign of solidarity with the Chilean people, gave refuge to many political emigrants. We demanded and achieved the release from prison in a concentration camp of the heroic son of this country, Luis Corvalan, refused an important football match for ourselves at the National Stadium of Santiago, turned into a prison drenched in the blood of Chilean patriots. In our country, they sang the songs of the brutally executed national tribune Victor Khara: "We will win!" and "As long as the people are united, they are invincible!".

I am not afraid of this statement: the tragedy of Chile has become our tragedy, the history of Chile has become a page of our history.

The events of half a century ago interrupted the Chilean democratic tradition for seventeen years, became the political watershed of the country's modern history, and gave a number of important lessons for the whole world for generations to come.

It is widely known that the Government of National Unity, headed by the socialist S. Allende, came to power in 1970 as a result of the free expression of the will of Chilean voters within the framework of the procedure provided for by the Constitution of the Republic. At the same time, the project of National Unity had an obvious international dimension, was focused on moving away from foreign dependence, on strengthening national and Latin American principles. The left-wing coalition aimed to achieve the political and economic independence of Chile, rejected such methods of influencing countries as discrimination, pressure, intervention or blockade. It was going to audit and, if necessary, denounce agreements that impose obligations on the country that limit its sovereignty. It was intended to maintain relations with all countries, regardless of their political and ideological orientation. It considered the Organization of American States (OAS) to be an instrument of North American imperialism, calling for the establishment of a truly representative organization of Latin American countries.

Such strategic plans of the Chilean leadership, of course, created - if we follow the well-known neo-colonial logic of the White House - an almost existential threat to the United States. Washington was and continues to be disgusted by the very idea that other states have the right to choose their own political and socio-economic development model. They can be guided by national interests, strengthen state sovereignty, and respect cultural and civilizational identity.

I would not like to delve into the analysis of the Chilean political alignment and economic policy of the country of that period. This is a purely internal affair of Chile, and only the Chilean people themselves can judge it. But it is obvious that many of the difficulties faced by the Allende government were to a decisive extent not only "warmed up", but also directly generated by Western politicians and business.

Declassified documents from American archives only confirmed what was not a secret immediately after the coup. Even before Stephen Allende took office, Washington had embarked on his removal using the entire arsenal of political blackmail and pressure. Every effort was made to destabilize the internal situation.

The most extensive tools were used: a multifaceted economic war (including external isolation and threats of restrictions against Chile's foreign partners); financing of the opposition, critical "civil society organizations" and the notorious "fifth column"; information and psychological pressure and disinformation of the population through controlled media; fostering brain drain; bringing confusion into the professional movement; creation and sponsorship of ultra-right organizations and radical militant groups; political blackmail, provocations and violence against supporters of the new government. In other words, the Americans actively used everything that later acquired the name "color revolutions" in a concentrated form.

Stephen Allende himself emotionally tried to convey to the world community the state of affairs at that time from the rostrum of the UN General Assembly in December 1972: "They wanted to isolate us from the world, to strangle us economically. To paralyze our trade in copper, which is the main export product, and to deprive us of the possibility of obtaining external loans. It is clear to us that when we expose the financial and economic blockade to which our country is subjected, it is not easy not only for the world community, but even for some of our compatriots, to understand this, because we are not talking about an open attack that would be known to the whole world. On the contrary, this attack is being carried out surreptitiously, in a roundabout way, although this does not make it any less dangerous for Chile.

Now there is a significant amount of materials in the public domain exposing the unsightly role of the State Department, the Central Intelligence Agency, and other American agencies in those events. For example, you can familiarize yourself with the documents declassified in 1998 on the "Fubelt project" - CIA operations aimed at overthrowing S. Allende. Back in September 1974, Seymour Hersh, a well-known unbiased American journalist, Pulitzer Prize winner, was one of the first to reveal the subversive activities of the White House against Chile. And in 1982 he published an investigation on this topic: "The price of power. Kissinger, Nixon and Chile." Very informative material.

The cynicism of American politicians is striking. According to CIA documents, President Richard Nixon then ordered steps to be taken to make the Chilean economy "scream." The American ambassador in Santiago, E. Corrie, developed this attitude: "We will do everything in our power to plunge Chile into extreme poverty and deprivation. And this will be a long-term policy." The Americans organized a boycott of Chilean copper, a strategic commodity, from the sale of which the country received the main foreign exchange earnings. They froze Chilean accounts in their banks. Local entrepreneurs began to pump capital abroad, cut jobs, and create an artificial food shortage.

A report submitted to the Senate, "U.S. Covert Operations in Chile, 1963-1973," shows that as early as 1971, the Chilean transactions of the U.S. Export-Import Bank were completely halted, and from 1971 to 1973, World Bank lending was halted.

American business, in fact, was directly involved in the illegal subversive operations of the CIA. Among them is the notorious telecommunications corporation ITT, which collaborated with the Nazi Reich and which the government of S. Allende tried to nationalize.

Such a truly Machiavellian modus operandi allowed the customers of the coup d'état in the South American country to achieve their goal. And given the successful "run-in", this set of destructive actions has become a kind of template that Washington and its satellites continue to use today in relation to sovereign governments around the world.

Westerners constantly violate such a fundamental principle of the UN Charter as non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries. This includes the third round of elections in Ukraine, orchestrated at the end of 2004, and the "color revolutions" in Yugoslavia, Georgia, and Kyrgyzstan. Finally, open support for the bloody coup d'état in Kiev in February 2014, as well as persistent attempts to repeat the scenario of the forceful seizure of power in Belarus in 2020. It is impossible not to mention the notorious "Monroe Doctrine", which the Americans seem to want to extend to the entire globe in order to turn the entire planet into their "backyard".

Another thing is that such a neo-colonial, frankly cynical line of the "collective West" is increasingly rejected by the World Majority, which is frankly tired of blackmail and pressure, including force, of dirty information wars and zero-sum geopolitical games. The states of the Global South and East want to control their own destiny, to pursue a nationally oriented domestic and foreign policy course, and not to pull "chestnuts out of the fire" for the former metropolises.

Russian-Chilean diplomatic relations were restored immediately after the collapse of the Pinochet regime in March 1990. I am sure that this will be the case in the future, no matter what opportunistic trends take possession of individual Chilean politicians. We have many things in common – common pages of history, the great Pacific Ocean, trade and economic cooperation, cultural, humanitarian and educational exchanges. Over the years, Chilean Presidents Patricio Aylwin, Ricardo Lagos and Michelle Bachelet, who belonged to different political movements, but invariably paid great attention to the development of friendly relations between the two countries, visited Russia. I have no doubt that the traditions laid down by Salvador Allende and continued by his true followers will be strengthened for the benefit of the peoples of our countries.

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